We all have to clean out our e-mail inboxes from spam, but what happens when your phone is taken over by robo-calls? Voters in the US were complaining about a wave of automated calls in the lead-up to the elections. Were you called? Did it influence your voting decisions?
Both parties were guilty and accused the other
party of being even more evil in their automated robotic calling
practices, but the fact was that automated calling systems were the
cheapest way for the parties to reach potential voters.
I feel fortunate. The only robotic calls I get are for crappy vacations to the Caribbean. It just pisses me off, but one woman in Ohio called the Washington Post in tears because she was so inundated by the calls that she couldn't reach the hospice where her terminally ill mother is receiving care.
Scott, of the Scott-o-Rama blog, thanked god the election was over:
For the first time in a couple of weeks, neither Buckaroo's phone or mine is ringing off the hook this evening. These past few days have been hell because every ten minutes or so the phone would ring with a pre-recorded message from [insert candidate's name here] urging me to vote for him or her or [insert local voter proposition here]. It was maddening. Although both Buckaroo and I are on the national "Do Not Call" list, the politicians who created the list conveniently exempted their campaign calls from having to follow it.
Don't you wish you had the power to create laws that cover everyone but you? That's real power. Or really useless. New Hampshire finally made them stop, according to the Associated Press. That's a start.
Voters also complained that some of the calls actually confused them over ballot initiatives or made them think they were being repeatedly bothered by a Democratic candidate when they were, in fact, negative messages from Republicans, according to the Towleroad blog.
It turns out the TPM Muckrakers were chronicling the efforts for the Republicans with their automated phone banks.
